Shadow the Hedgehog:
There was a Gamecube version and a PS2 version, both of which appeared to be the same. I only got a chance to play the PS2 version, which has crappier graphics and skips alot. Shadow isn't a terribly bad game, but it's rather unpolished. In other words, it's better than Sonic Heroes, but that's not saying a whole lot. Beating up enemies with the environment is fun, but Shadow slides around the level really fast when you tilt the control stick, causing many a death by bottomless pit.
There were 4 levels: Westopolis, Cryptic Castle, Glyphic Canyon, and BOSS: Black Bull. Everyone's seen Westopolis and Glyphic Canyon, so I'll spare you guys the details on those. Cryptic Castle is alot like Hang Castle, only without the upside-down level gimmick. Amy is there and wants you to look for Cream, who wandered off into the castle and hasn't come back. Amy's voice actor doesn't sound like the one from Sonic X. The 4Kids one would be an improvement in my opinion. Black Bull look to be the Hero path boss of Westopolis, as you have Sonic to help you out. (even though he just runs around like an idiot.) H's easy. Really easy. You just keep homing attacking him in the eye, and he's dead. Speaking of which, I found myself using Shadow's normal attacks more often than the weapons. The weapons seem to be there almost as a bonus, or power up of sorts.
I also pressed Up, Down, Left, Right, X, and Start to see what would happen, and oddly enough, it accesses the debug/level select. None of the levels work, but I managed to see what all of them were. The most interesting ones were the GUN base, Black Doom's base, 2 different ARK levels from the past, and ARK ruins. Pressing select supposedly took you to "last scenario," bu it just crashes like the rest. If anyone manages to go to the convention, try it out.
Sonic Rush (Spoilers included):
The full version of Sonic Rush was playable, and I played it the most. You can play as either Sonic or Blaze (duh), and each one has a different story. They progress through the levels in a different order as well. For example, Sonic's first zone is Leaf Storm, while Blaze's is Night Carnival. One of the games had everything unlocked, including the last story.
The level names are:
Leaf Storm, Mirage Road (not sure), Water Palace, Night Carnival, Dead Line, Huge Crisis (which is actually a cruise ship level... odd.), and another one which I'm forgetting. The level after Dead Line (the 7th level) is called Unknown. Clever.
As far as the story goes, Eggman and Eggman Nega (yes, that's alternate Eggy's name) plan to use the Sol Emeralds and Chaos Emeralds together to rule the world, and Blaze is trying to get he Sol Emeralds back to save her world. Unfortunately, Blaze is anti-social and acts like a cross between Shadow and Sonic 3&K Knuckles, so she tries to save both worlds but fights Sonic because she's angsty. The boss of Dead Line is the character you aren't playing as. Sonic fights like he normaly would, but he sometimes creates a giant tornado to suck you in ala Sonic Heroes, and Blaze can summon giant pillars of flame.
Once they have one hit left, there's a little dialogue, then the two fly at each other at top speed and you have to mash the A and B buttons to knock the off the edge.
The Last Story starts out with Blaze wondering why she can't go home, and some other stuff I forget. Then the Eggmans show up, and explain teir plan to use both sets of emeralds. They get the Sol Emeralds, but Sonic has the Chaos Emeralds and shows up right as they point this out. Blaze notices that the Sol Emeralds aren't shining and have lost their power, but Sonic and his friends that have magically appeared politely tell her to stop being a bitch because the Sol Emeralds are powered by THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP. So they start glowing when she realises that she has friends, and they both transform into their Super forms. (Super Blaze is pink with Red clothes, and is covered with flames.) Each character fights against thei respective Eggman, and probably both at the end but I stopped playing because I was running out of time.
This game is actually really, really fun. I downloaded a demo which I still have on my DS if anyone wants me to make movies of it.
Sonic Riders:
I didn't play a whole lot, but it was fun. There were two courses, Metal City,and Green [something]. Each character has their own stats and boards to choose from, sort of like Snowboard Kids. In fact, this game is like Snowboard Kids crossed with F-Zero GX. Alot of it is unique though, like the ability to ride the opponent's turbulence like a halfpipe. That helps to balance out the players. There were 8 characters (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Jet, Storm, Wave, and Eggman) and slots for 8 more. Eggman on a hoverbike = awesome, by the way. The beginning of the race is like that of Sonic 3; You start out behind the starting line and have room to run, but if you go past it before the countdown ends, you get shocked by an electric field. It's the best Sonic racing game yet, and I think it looks good so far.
Phantasy Star Universe:
PSU was the first game I played, naturally. It plays like PSO, only... Sexier. Holding L1 locked on to enemies so you could strafe, which came in handy. You could also dual wield, and instead of TP, each wepon has PP. This sounds like a horrible descicion, but it isn't that bad. Each weapon has a special attack which uses up PP, except for the cane, which has two techniques. Pressing the right trigger lets you aim with your gun in first person, to hit weak spots on enemies. The only item drops I saw were meseta, which looks much like it did in PSO, only wider and shorter.
The demo had 2 "chapters" of the single player story, one on the plains, and one in the ruins. The first chapter has you escorting a scientist named Dr. Dorson (He's called Dr. Dawson in chapter 2) to these ruins called Relics. You (Ethan Waber), along with your teacher, Karen Erra, and your classmate/rival Hyuga Ryght escort the good doctor across the plains. After a couple rooms, you wind up in the nest of a large Dragon named... De Ragan. Get it? Deragan? Dragon? Oh Sonic Team, your wit never ceases to amaze me. Anyway, De Ragan fights like a very, very angry version of the dragon from PSO, with alot more attacks. His flames behave much differently, an burn alot longer. He also can dash across the stage and swipe at you with his tail. Unlike the dragon, however, he doesn't burrow underground. Thank God.
Chapter two has you in Relics, walking around. There are these reallly annoying enemies that are short and can attack really fast. They also attack in big packs, which is a pain. I tried attacking them with a sword, but they always got the first strike. So, I blasted the shit out of them with Gifoie. Problem solved. Anyway, you go to the central chamber, where one of the statues (called Stateria) comes alive and attacks you. Slowly. Its sword creates shockwaves, though, which hit pretty hard. I figured it was an easy boss, but apparently not. More statues come alive and appear everywhere. Hyuga and Karen stay back to fight most of them while you escort the Doctor outside.
Then, Renvolt Magashi, the evil robot overlord guy, shows up. He wants Dr. Dorson back, as the doc used to work for him. (He calls him Dr. Darren for some reason) The doctor refuses, to which Renvolt tells him that he IS going home now. Dr. Dorson/Dawson/Darren suddenly starts goind into spasms and convulsing, and collapses. Turns out there aare millions of nanomachines running through his bloodstream that will release a deadly poison on command. Magashi apparently gave the command. Dr. D dies. The end.
God I need this game.
SUMMARY: Shadow's bleh, Rush is awesome, Riders looks promising, and PSU is sex.
I've been up for nearly 22 hours straight, so forgive me if any of this sounds rushed or shitty.
As far as Rush goes, the levels are very detailed, right down to individual leaves blowing in the wind and birds flying away from their perches as you run past. Sonic leaves a small dust/smoke trail when he runs fast, so you can see the friction where his feet touch the ground. When Blaze runs fast, these are replaced by flames, like they used to show in old Sonic promotional artwork from the early to mid 90's. Enemies leave behind small animals once again, which run along the ground or stand in place for a while. When they are on the bottom screen, you can touch them to make them hop. If you tap the prrot when it's in the air, it will fly higher. If you tap Sonic he'll hop in place twice, and then beckon for you to hurry up. He's silent when doing this, though. The act clear screen is accompanied by Sonic, who does a little dance very similar to the one Beat does when clearing a stage in Jet Set Radio. Speaking of JSR, the music seems a little bit inspired by it. It has random voice snippets in it, though you can't understand them, and it has a similar style to some of the songs there. Ummm... What else... Oh yeah, you can hold the Nitro Dash button down until your Dash meter turns white. You build up the meter by doing tricks in the air or on rails, or by defeating enemies. The game does suffer from hold right and win system in Leaf Storm, but it's still incredibly fun to play for some reason. There are more branching routes and far less bottomless pits. It's rather hard to fall into one unless you try. However, Night Carnival had one that I always fell into as Blaze.
After defeating your rival character, (Blaze as Sonic, Sonic as Blaze) Eggman/Eggman Nega still flies away and yells at you for some reason. The next boss/level is sort of like S&K's Eggman Robot. You start off on a small platform with some rings, and a giant robot behind you. Itt tries to smash you with its arms, which create shockwaves when they land. After hitting one of these arms, the robot will move to the edge of your platform and try and whack you again/fire shockwaves at you. At this point, the view is at an angle to the robot, so that it is almost behind Sonic but 2D enough to tell where you're going. The robot's arm lays there for a second, and you have to jump onto it and run up the arm to his head, then attack him. After this, he'll fire sweeping lasers at you sometimes when behind you, and the background gradually changes to white flames and clouds as you begin to fall through the atmosphere.
As for the final boss, you start out as Super Sonic on the top screen, against Eggman. It's like doomsday zone at first, only with giant lasers shooting at you. You evenually you reach Eggman, and you have to reflect lasers back at him to damage him. Also, for the first time, Super Sonic can actually lose rings from a hit, but only from some really slow homing missles. After hitting Eggman 3 or so times, he retreats to a strage device, and goes into one end towards the top. Eggman Nega comes out of the bottom end in an upside-down version of Eggman's machine on the bottom screen. Now you play as Super Blaze (Who can shoot fireballs) and basically do the same thing, only I believe that the attacks are different. I stopped playing at this point, as I had to leave.
If you're expecting the next Sonic 3, you'll be disappointed, but if you're expecting the next Sonic Advance game, you'll be pleasantly surprised. The game is the best portable Sonic game yet, and it feels more complete than any of the Advance series games. In my opinion, it's well worth the money. I'm not sure why they're waitning so long to release it, though, as the game was complete when I played it. No glitches, no disabled or missing features, just the full game.
I'll have more of my PSU and Shadow impressions up later. (I didn't get to play enough of Riders as I would have liked to.)
Any questions are welcomed, they may remind me of anything I haven't told you guys. Once again, I'm sorry about the video. I feel terrible about it.
First off, Shadow.
I played Westopolis first, then quit when I realised that I've already seen the level more than enough in the walkthrough and gameplay videos. Next off for me was Glyphic Canyon, which wasn't quite as cool as Westopolis. Knuckles wanted me to kill Black Arms aliens, Dooms Eye wanted me to activate wierd power crystal things to "awaken the true power of the Black Arms' temple." I do this, and it turns out that the true power of this magical flying temple is... COMING WINTER 2005. I am booted to th title screen. I decide to try Cryptic Castle. Shadow is looking for Eggman who has fled into a castle for some reason. I approach a large door, and Shadow tells himself that he can break through it easily. He sounds more like he's trying to convince himself, than trying to tell us what to do. I kick down the door and find Amy, who wants me to find Cream, who wandered into the castle for god knows what reason and got lost. Let me take a moment to describe Amy's new voice. I swear to god, it's the one pitch that, while not too high, drives you completely insane. It's like one of those dog whistles. I quit the level, not just because of Amy's newfound echolocation talent, but because I just didn't care enough about the level. Black Bull was the next part I played. Black Doom is ticked and summons the Black Bull (Basically a giant red blob with a giant mouth and eye) to demolish Westopolis. Basically, Sonic runs around in circles and makes oh so witty remarks while you homing attack your way up to its eyeball and kill it. Homing attack. Homing attack. Homing attack. Homing attack. Homing attack. Homing attack. Homing attack. Homing attack. Dead. That's all there was in the Shadow demo, besides the hidden level select cheat I found.
I've basically explained Phantasy Star Universe already, but I'd like to add some things about the battle system. You hold a gun in your left hand and a blade in the right hand, unless you're using two daggers etc. (I'd imagine). You're normal action pallete is the blade, with its special and normal attacks. Holding R1 and pressing the attack button fires the handgun. You can only cast techniques through canes, but they seem more powerful this time around and it wasn't an inconvinience at all. Each weapon has its own Photon Points (PP) that are used for special attacks on blades, techniques on canes, and ammo on guns. (Each handgun shot uses 1 PP) Each weapon has alot of PP, and I never even came close to running out, even after spamming Gifoie and Resta for a while. Guns can be aimed in first person by pressing the right analog stick. This is used for targetting an enemy's weak point. I'd like to add that swords are much, much, much slower. They hit more targets, though, from what I can tell.
There's all my posts that mattered. I left out the part where I try to take a video of my Sonic Rush demo, shut off my DS and call it a job well done, and then realise that my camera broke. I hate my life.
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